CANMORE – Canmore’s elected officials began deliberating the 2019-20 operational and capital budgets and are being asked to approve a 6.6 per cent municipal property tax increase for next year.
On top of that, administration is requesting a three per cent tax increase in 2020 as part of the operating budget. Council votes on the budgets at its last business meeting in December.
However, council’s budget guideline, approved earlier this year, sets out a maximum limit of five per cent municipal tax increase for each year.
Chief Administrative Officer Lisa de Soto argued that by averaging the two years, administration meets the budget guideline and the average is less than five per cent in that case.
“This is where we say on average we met the guideline of five per cent per year, but in 2019 due to some of these pressures we are seeing, we are as administration asking you to consider a 6.6 per cent increase,” de Soto said.
The CAO told council that administration used the budget guidelines, capital funding envelope, master and strategic plans accepted by council and the Government Finance Officers Association best practices to create the proposed budget.
“There were a number of pressures we felt throughout the budget generation process,” de Soto said. “There are a number of strategies we have employed to deal with the pressures in the budget.”
The draft operating budget included tax revenues from new development estimated at $400,000 and increased revenues from permit fines, sales and rentals of $459,000.
Some areas of the budget are expected to bring in less revenue than in past years like RCMP, with fine revenues on a downward trend, as well at ATCO franchise fees, grants and decreased rental revenues at the Canmore Rec Centre while it is under construction.
Affiliate organizations have requested $91,000 in increased funding, including the library, museum, Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley and artsPlace. Additional costs in the 2019 budget include increased insurance rates of $25,000, Roam transit increases of $113,000 and human resource factors like cost of living, performance pay and adjustments totalling $382,000.
New debt taken in 2018 for the Canmore Rec Centre has increased debt-servicing costs associated to it for an additional $432,000 in the budget.
“Any time you do a capital project that is debt funded, immediately there is an operational impact the next year,” de Soto said.
Staffing requests, both new positions and changed staffing models, totalled $1.2 million as well.
Once all the increased and decreased revenues and costs were calculated, a total increase to the 2019 budget of $1.5 million, or a 6.6 per cent tax increase was arrived at, according to de Soto.
Acting manager of corporate services Therese Rogers spoke to the recent corporate structure review. Rogers told council Canmore isn’t a small town anymore.
“We have reached the limit of our current administrative model and some of what you see in this budget reflects the need to scale our model up to reflect the true cost of delivering services to the community,” Rogers said.
Canmore’s municipal operating budget for 2019 is proposed at $53.4 million, up from the 2018 budget of $50.4 million and the actual 2017 budget of
$51.1 million. In 2020, the operational budget is proposed to be $55 million.
Total municipal property taxation in 2019 is proposed to be $25 million and covers half the budget, de Soto said.
“The other major revenues come from our utilities and some of our fees and rentals,” she said.
The Town’s financial strategy also contains direction for reserve contributions each year, but de Soto noted those cannot be met within the proposed municipal property tax increase limits.
That includes annual contributions to the asset replacement and rehabilitation reserve, the general capital reserve and flood mitigation reserve.
